


The Open Door

by Foophile



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Conditioning, Dubious Consent, F/F, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5959615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foophile/pseuds/Foophile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“But how? What can you tell me to make this all make sense?” Kara’s fingers tightened on the cylon’s and Six gave her a bright smile.</p><p>Originally written in 2008.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Open Door

“You bitch!” Kara screamed. Spitting onto the concrete floor she was chained to. “Frak you!”

Six stepped over the bloody spit and straddled the metal chair in the center of the prison cell. “Now I know you’re a pretty adventurous girl, but I didn’t think you swung in the cylon direction. The thought’s getting me a little excited, Starbuck.”

Kara slid back into the cold wall at the cylon’s leer. “I’m not going to tell you a damn thing. You might as well kill me now.”

“But who would we play with then?” Six sighed dramatically. “No, we won’t kill you, Kara. You’re more important than you realize and I believe that God has a plan for you that you’ll reveal to all of us one day.”

Kara glared. “You’re frakkin’ nuts.”

Six went completely silent and stood. The chair scraped loudly against the floor as she pushed it away and approached Kara’s corner.

Kara clenched her jaw, trying not to cringe when the tall blonde leaned right in her face.

“I’m devoted. I believe in God’s purpose.” Six’s voice rose with each word until her alto voice was ringing from the stone walls. “I am a disciple of His divine word! You don’t get to question what He’s ordered you to do! You’re a disgrace to His Holy name!”

The last syllable echoed around the room and Six visibly calmed, pushing back a lock of her curly hair. She cleared her throat. “But you’ll be here for a while Kara, you’ll learn. I’m sure you’ll appreciate your place in all of this once you figure it out.”

“Where is here?” Kara dared to ask. The last thing she remembered was Lee’s voice yelling for her to pull up her Viper. She remembered what Leoben had shown her about her mother and she’d been ready to die. Kara’s breath stilled in her chest. She’d been ready to die.

Kara thought she had and then she woke up in this gray room, cold and chained to the floor. Her body shivered as Kara thought of how eager she’d been to end her life; how she hadn’t even suspected that her visions and desperation might all be a part of the cylon’s plan to break her.

Kara knew that everyone thought she was dead. There would be no heroic rescue. No Lee barreling through the narrow cell door with his gun drawn and his face stony with worry. Her stomach plummeted for a moment and Kara wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to have died instead.

“See,” Six’s smiling voice brought Kara out of her thoughts. “You’re already searching for your purpose. God’s will is taking hold.”

Kara flinched. “No, you stupid cunt! I’m trying to find a way that I can break your frakkin’ neck and get the frak outta here!”

Six tilted her head to the side, resembling an inquisitive dog. “Sure you were. I’ll leave you to it. As futile as it is.” Her stilettos clicked across the room and she swung open the heavy cell door. “I’ll be back to visit you sometime.”

To Kara, the loud clang of the door slamming shut resembled a gunshot.  
___________________________

It felt like weeks until Six returned in person, but Kara guessed that it could have been just a handful of endless days.

It was hard to gauge the passage of time when faceless cylons pushed a bowl of watery soup under the door once a day and Kara only had enough slack on the chain to move from the back of the cell to the metal toilet. She had no doubt that the cylons knew how dangerous she could be from her time with the Leoben model on the New Caprica.

Kara smiled to herself at the thought of how many times she’d killed him. By the time the Galactica had returned, she’d lost count. Knives, strangulation, exsanguination, Kara had learned very inventive ways to end the cylon’s life – he was so like a human after all.

Fragile and breakable.

“Still thinking up ways to break free?” Six’s voice shocked Kara out of her dark thoughts. She hadn’t even heard the cell door open.

Kara was weak from the poor nutrition but could lift her head from the concrete floor to see that Six was in one of her red dresses again. There were slits everywhere in the expensive fabric, exposing her to the point where Kara wondered why Six would wear the frakkin’ thing at all.

She remembered girls like Six. Back before the ending of the colonies were blown to bits and humans were hunted down like naughty dogs. Kara had never wanted to be one of them. She got plenty of play just by being loud and bossy. And she knew that she was pretty enough to bed.

Kara’s jumbled thoughts wandered to Zak. She’d been pretty enough for him to want to marry her.

Then, she thought of Lee and had to close her eyes against the sudden pain in her chest. She would have married him. After a fight, if he’d been man enough to follow her like Sam had, she would have married him and had his little pilot babies for the rest of her life. Damn him.

Damn her for walking away too many times.

“Ah, thinking about the flyboy again.” Six’s red high heels came into Kara’s field of vision.

She had almost forgotten the cylon was in the room.

“You know, you always get this look when you’re thinking about the Adama boy. The one you haven’t managed to kill yet.” Six pontificated. She looked down at her in mock sympathy. “You loved him and lost him. It would be simple, bittersweet, if you hadn’t already been married at the time, wouldn’t Kara?”

Six stepped around Kara’s head and nudged her shoulder with her foot. Kara flipped over onto her back with a weak moan. At least with her head back, Kara could see the blonde cylon against the harsh light of the cell overhead.

Six’s long fingered hands traced the wing of the tattoo on Kara’s arm. The touch made Kara shiver as if trailed up the length of her bicep and over her collarbone. As a finger lifted Kara’s chin, she managed to pull her head away.

Six’s lips went thin. “Adultery never turns out well. But I think you’ve learned that lesson.”

Kara swallowed the ash in her dry throat. “How long?”

Six straightened and pretended to think. “How long have you been here? Or how long since you’ve seen me last?”

Kara only managed one word. “You.”

Six’s smile made her cringe. “I didn’t know you cared, Starbuck. I’m flattered. It’s been almost fourteen days. We’re all surprised you we’ve taken this long to ask. I remember our time on New Caprica, when you came in to save your husband, you yelled the house down until you’d lost your voice. Then you yelled some more.”

Six leaned down to ask, “What’s so different now?”

Kara had been wondering that herself, when she hadn’t been thinking about Lee or Sam. She wanted to say that she was tired of the fight but Kara was a solider, she’d been taught that the human body had reserves that defied imagination.

She wanted to believe that her mother would have fought but she remembered the past as clear as if it was still happening. Her mother had given up when she’d been diagnosed with cancer and she’d done all she could to drive Kara away before she sat back to waste away. Perhaps, Kara thought, she was more like her mother than she’d ever anticipated.

Perhaps, Leoben was right all along.

And that was the crux wasn’t it? That was where Kara’s logic had stopped for fourteen days. She could go no further. It had taken losing everything to even bring her to that point.

Six’s hand suddenly fisted in Kara’s dirty hair, pulling her head back so that she had to focus on the cylon.

“Still can’t say it huh? It’s as plain as day, Starbuck. Maybe you need a few more days to figure it out.” Six’s voice dripped with disgust. Kara could only blink up her in confusion.

After a few moments of silence Kara licked her cracked lips. “Maybe…maybe you should.”

Six left go and stepped back, surprised but intrigued. “You’ll figure it out, Kara. And when you do, we’ll be here to help.” The cylon retreated to the cell door. “We’ll give you more food to think. I’m sure it won’t take you another two weeks.”

The cell door slammed shut once more.  
______________________________

Kara woke out of dead sleep with a gasp. She’d been dreaming of Lee’s voice again, the angry terror it had before she’d closed her eyes and let her Viper explode.

Only this time she’d dreamt that Lee’s scream was coming out through Sam’s mouth, Sam’s body, when he’d fucked her last. She’d dreamt that as lights went off inside her eyelids, Sam’s mouth had gaped open on Lee’s scream and she’d seen that whirling mandala down his throat.

Kara couldn’t help but think of her hallucination earlier with Leoben in her apartment. She’d had sex with him, the paint covered mandala at her back and then over Leoben’s shoulder.

She had stared at it as the cylon touched her body.

Kara sat up in revelation. She had been given more food, as Six had promised, and slowly re-gained enough strength to get off the floor. She even managed a little exercise while she did what Six told her to do: think.

She was forming connections like she never had before. About the men she’d loved and one particular that she’d hated. About what her mother had taught her about life and what the figure of Leoben had taught her about death.

It all came back to her readiness. What she was willing to accept. And after twenty five years of running away, she was now willing to accept that what “Leoben” had been saying all along was right.

The Kara Thrace of the past had died. She hadn’t known or been willing to accept her purpose. The new Kara knew that there were things that she needed to learn, even from the enemy.

She hadn’t fought her new captivity because she knew that to the remainder of the human race, there was no one to save. Kara’s time of learning with Galactica was over, she thought. A new life had begun.

She knew that it wasn’t about right or wrong, good or bad, anymore. The survival of everything, human or cylon, depended on giving up what the old life had taught and accepting that they all had a purpose. One that would last forever. One that had been defined by the past and would live on in the future. One that every person that had ever lived had to make.

“This has all happened before, and all of it will happen again.” Kara echoed Leoben’s words with a new understanding.

The door to her cell opened with bang and Six entered alone. Kara wondered if they’d watched her all this time.

“At last.” Six said with a grin. “You will be our ambassador to humans. You will learn what we know. And you already know everything that we need to learn. Perhaps you always have.”

The chains holding Kara’s wrists suddenly released and dropped to the ground with a clang. Kara swallowed back the instinct to fight and flee.

“Do you still wish to escape?” Six didn’t look worried. After all they’d fought before, long ago.

Kara looked down at her bruised wrists and shook her head minutely. “But what if I still don’t know? My purpose, I mean.”

Six came to her side and kneeled on the dirty ground. She took Kara’s hands in her own clean ones and gave her a look that Kara could only glance at. There was caring there, real or not, and maybe some sort of love.

After all of her revelations, Kara didn’t think she could handle that as well.

“The search is what really matters, Kara. It has kept your race alive. Now, you will guide us all home.”

“But how? What can you tell me to make this all make sense?” Kara’s fingers tightened on the cylon’s and Six gave her a bright smile.

“Your people have oracles and so do mine.” Six came up off her knees, still holding onto Kara with one hand. She looked down at Kara and the light from overhead shone through her blond hair, setting her aglow. “Are you ready to meet them?”

Kara came to her feet and looked at the cell’s exit, open over Six’s shoulder.

She thought of everything Leoben had told her, the question her mother had answered with such confidence, and the answer she’d given Zak when he asked her to marry him, then followed Six to the door.

END


End file.
